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Related papers: Planetary Microlensing from the MACHO Project

200 papers

If stars at the lower end of the main sequence are responsible for the microlensing events observed in the Galactic bulge, then light from the lensing star contributes to the observed brightness. The background and lensing stars generally…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-22 Marc Kamionkowski

We provide a status report on our search for dark matter in our Galaxy in the form of massive compact halo objects (or Machos), using gravitational microlensing of background stars. This search uses a very large format CCD camera on the…

We consider small-scale spheroidal clusters of weakly interacting massive particles in our Galaxy as non-compact gravitational microlenses and predict the appearance of caustics in the plane of a lensed source. The crossing of these…

Astrophysics · Physics 2010-04-30 M. B. Bogdanov , A. M. Cherepashchuk

Microlensing studies of quasars can reveal dark matter lumps over a broad mass spectrum; we highlight the importance of monitoring quasars which are seen through the halos of low-redshift galaxies. For these configurations microlensing by…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 Mark A. Walker

Microlensing events can be used to directly measure the masses of single field stars to a precision of $\sim$1-10\%. The majority of direct mass measurements for stellar and sub-stellar objects typically only come from observations of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-11-09 M. B. Nielsen , D. M. Bramich

Gravitational microlensing is a robust tool to detect and directly measure the abundance and mass of any kind of compact objects, either in our galaxy or in the extragalatic domain. On basis to generic, broadly applicable arguments, it is…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-05-27 E. Mediavilla , J. Jiménez-Vicente

Automatic classification of variability is now possible with tools like neural networks. Here, we present two neural networks for the identification of microlensing events -- the first discriminates against variable stars and the second…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 V. Belokurov , N. W. Evans , Y. Le Du

The observations of microlensing events in the Large Magellanic Cloud suggest that a sizable fraction ($\sim$ 50%) of the galactic halo is in the form of MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects) with an average mass $\sim 0.27…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 F. De Paolis , Ph. Jetzer , G. Ingrosso , M. Roncadelli

We undertake the first study of two-planet microlensing models recovered from simulations of microlensing events generated by realistic multi-planet systems in which 292 planetary events including 16 two-planet events were detected from…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 Wei Zhu , Andrew Gould , Matthew Penny , Shude Mao , Rieul Gendron

The status of searches for gravitational microlensing events of the stars in our galaxy and in other galaxies of the Local Group, the interpretation of the results, some theory, and prospects for the future are reviewed. The searches have…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-05-05 Bohdan Paczynski

We present previously unpublished photometry of three Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) microlensing events and show that the new photometry confirms the microlensing interpretation of these events. These events were discovered by the MACHO…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 David P. Bennett , Andrew C. Becker , Austin Tomaney

If the Galaxy contains ~10^{11}M_sol in cold gas clouds of ~Jovian mass and \~AU size, these clouds will act as converging lenses for optical light, magnifying background stars at a detectable rate. The resulting light curves can resemble…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 B. T. Draine

We discuss the results of the MEGA microlensing campaign towards M31. Our analysis is based on an analytical evaluation of the microlensing rate, taking into account the observational efficiency as given by the MEGA collaboration. In…

Characterizing the nature and spatial distribution of the lensing objects that produce the previously measured microlensing optical depth toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) remains an open problem. We present an appraisal of the…

We report on our search for microlensing towards the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Analysis of 5.7 years of photometry on 11.9 million stars in the LMC reveals 13 - 17 microlensing events. This is significantly more than the $\sim$ 2 to 4…

We search for signatures of planets in 43 intensively monitored microlensing events that were observed between 1995 and 1999. Planets would be expected to cause a short duration (~1 day) deviation on the smooth, symmetric light curve…

With their excellent photometric precision and dramatic increase in monitoring frequency, future microlensing survey experiments are expected to be sensitive to very short time-scale, isolated events caused by free-floating and…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Cheongho Han , B. Scott Gaudi , Jin H. An , Andrew Gould

I review proposals for explaining the current gravitational microlensing results from the EROS and MACHO surveys towards the Magellanic Clouds. Solutions involving massive compact halo objects (MACHOs), both baryonic and non-baryonic, as…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Eamonn Kerins